Like many literary youths just out of college, Pankaj Mishra dreamt in his early 20s of being a writer. He holed up in the Kashmiri Himalayas of his native India to read and reflect, and he found his imagination caught by the maroon-robed Ladhaki monks. Dreaming of...
The Cambodian Buddhist leader and peace activist Maha Ghosananda led the restoration of Buddhism in his homeland following the killing by the Khmer Rouge between 1976 and 1979 of all but 3,000 of the country’s 60,000 Buddhist monks. Despite losing his entire...
The Buddha of history is not the same as the archetypal Buddha, but we can come close to him through the words he left behind and though imagination. This was a keynote talk at the 2011 Triratna Buddhist Order Convention and reveals the Buddha to be a man of humour...
Decisions shape our lives, but psychologists say we are remarkably bad at making them. That’s true of strategic decisions, tactical decisions and decisions made in the heat of the moment. Typically, we are poor at assessing risk, understanding probabilities and...
Lest there be any doubt about Buddhism’s arrival in western culture, consider an advert from a few years ago showing a room full of meditators. The copy reads, ‘If you are going to follow the breath, it may as well be fresh. Eat tic-tacs.’ If tic-tac eaters can...
